I don’t think that tractors will ever go the way of the dodo and when you have proper logistics, say a reasonably dense S-Bahn type rail network that can also handle shipping individual containers, a tractor and a trailer is all you need as you only have to haul to the next logistics hub and there’s no truck load even 100 year old tractors can’t tow: When you can pull a plough through soil torque isn’t something you need to worry about, 20 horses at 5km/h go vroom. 20 horses! Do you know how much those eat.

They absolutely can do such things but then the money comes out of their pockets, possibly with the option to sue Rockstar for breach of contract and money back. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Rockstar contacted Valve and said “don’t worry we’ll take the hit”, having calculated what it costs to continue supporting the deck vs. taking that hit. Certainly not a company which has to worry about cashflow a lot.

Sony also refunded CP77, IIRC without getting CDPR involved, and Sony generally has a shoddy return policy. At that point, to the store, customer goodwill is more important and they’ll figure out things on the backend.

OP didn’t describe that kind of case, though, but “I bought a game without checking whether it’s compatible with my hardware and didn’t bother to launch it for six months”. Steam isn’t going to refund that out of their own pocket that’s what the 14 days are for, so that they don’t have to do it out of their own pocket.

Key thing about avoiding lawsuits is not lack of communication but not having illegal hiring practices. And it’s not like everyone gets rejected for being a bad candidate, you might just have too many applicants and want to stay on good terms with them, maybe a position will open in the future.

And, regardless any of that, a simple but polite, standardised “We closed the position, you didn’t make the cut, we wish you the best of luck” to tell people that they can stop waiting and consider the application failed, look somewhere else, is really never too much to ask. Even if they had to be escorted out by police. It’s ghosting which really grinds my gears.

Possibly, technical inspections. I’m not sure whether it’s a requirement for cars to be street legal or just a requirement for cars to be sold on the market. The regulation only mentions that it’s about type approval but it’s not like modifying a car automatically nullifies its type approval.

Certainly would be hard to argue for authorities that snipping the eCall would endanger others, similar situation as with seat belts I don’t think legislation is unified there.

14 days, to the developer, means that you now know that you actually have the money and can plan with it. Months later, the money has either been spent, or earmarked for something in particular.

Your best hope at that point is that the developer has allocated some money for people like you but otherwise, nope. Accounting would break down your door if you granted the refund.

For a dev those 30% are very much worth it because Steam has tons of customers and very good recommendation algorithms, you gain more in additional sales than what you lose from the cut. Could they do with less probably but they’re not extorting devs. There’s a reason why Epic had to do stuff like guarantee sales and provide huge advances to get anyone onto their excuse for a platform.

20% for repeat offenders.

Historically EU fines are bad at stopping companies from trying shit, but they are good at stopping the behaviour. The money, btw, doesn’t go towards the EU’s budget it goes towards the member states’ contributions, everyone gets a rebate.

Sounds like the consumer version of the DHL StreetScooter Work (L), with those even the passenger seat is an optional extra. Trouble was that while it’s the perfect vehicle for last-mile distribution routes most companies doing that kind of thing (like bakeries) don’t have the finances to back up an actual car producer, and DHL didn’t want to become a car producer. Taking over the company to get their hands on the trucks, yes, but bringing it to scale so they wouldn’t have to subsidise it? Not their business. And German car manufactures don’t want to build it because small bare-bones vehicles don’t have margin, anything smaller and less fancy than an actual van doesn’t make sense to them given the fixed cost of their production lines. Don’t worry, though, the inventor got the rights back, production is moving to Thailand, new vehicle is in the pipeline, with the core components (chassis etc.) designed for a 50 year lifetime. I’m sure DHL will figure out how to deliver delivery vans.

Cars must be able to autonomously call emergency services. You don’t need a SIM for that, or for that matter have the modem switched on all the time.

To me, it demonstrates that you value wasting time.

Saying thank you when saying goodbye after the interview? Perfectly fine and proper, that’s social lube. Sending an email to the candidate explaining why they didn’t get the job? Good fucking mores. Sending a thank you email with no actual content? Why the fuck am I reading this?

Yep on second thought I don’t think it’s so much stable career or the availability of childcare as security overall, any way to answer “We can do this for 18 years no matter what” in the positive. And yes that’s where capitalism and CDU bashing of “lazy moochers” strikes hard. Having a different job every six months and occasionally none would be right up many people’s alley if it didn’t put you into all sorts of economic trouble.

And the “we can do this for 18 years no matter what” thing was easy in the GDR: Don’t do things the Stasi doesn’t like, done. The SED went to great lengths ensuring that if you kept your head down, and push come to shove are willing to fill a hole another is digging (because duty to work), you really didn’t have to worry.

It’s been in place in more or less its current form since 1975, have a graph. Colours are generally for 1-4th child if there’s a fifth one then that’s a tax deduction. Before that there were schemes but they would not kick in for the first child and generally speaking it was even more of a pittance. In primary school, in the 80s, our maths teacher actually did a run-down of how much that money didn’t pay for our new shoes.

That’s West Germany in the east they spent a lot on free daycare which seems to have had much better results. Plenty of states nowadays do have free daycare at least for poor parents, and generally make the fees income-dependent, but the level of service still isn’t anywhere like it was in the GDR where you could also offload school-age kids to the state when they had holidays, summer camps and stuff, but you didn’t. Which isn’t exactly rare kids get more holidays than workers.

Overall, the reason our birthrate is only stabilised at a low level instead of at a reasonable level is because conservatives care more about supporting family models few people want than about solving the issue. Nah not even “conservatives”, it’s specifically Catholic conservatives.

And, no, I’m not advocating for re-introducing the FDJ, blue scarves and everything. How about handing organisations like the Scouts some money so they can offer summer camps for pretty much the cost of food. It’d be mostly money to allow adults to not work while running those camps (that is, extend their holidays) as well as some materiel costs. Increased tent wear.

Being genocidal and, indeed, committing crimes against humanity on a regular basis, does not make one suicidal. Any, and with that I mean any, nuclear state opting to retaliate against Russia using nukes would mean the end of Russia. No, not all of them can glass the whole landmass but there’s no Russia without Moscow and St. Petersburg. No empire without its core.

Zyklon B wasn’t really an I.G. Farben product, it was developed (as a pesticide) and primarily produced by Degesch, a subsidiary of Degussa, now Evonik. I.G. Farben bought 30% of Degesch shares in 1930, increasing to 42.6% in 1936, that’s the connection. Degussa also processed tooth gold. Ultimately the people hanged at the gallows for Zyklon B were none of the producers but (aside from the ones doing the poisoning) the distributors, in particular for supplying Zyklon B without odorant. The inventor got an aquittal after sitting six years in remand.

I guess the whole Zyklon B to I.G. Farben connection is very much influenced by the high-profile process and forced breakup of the conglomerate. Judging by current evilness I’d definitely put Bayer on top. Back then as now, I guess: No, not Nazis, but profiteers without scruples: Plundering industry in conquered lands, forced labour, that’s mostly what I.G. Farben executives were sentenced for. Not guilty verdicts on the bringing Nazis to power part, being SS members, and preparing for war of aggression, though they certainly made money off producing for the war.

And then there’s the whole scheme language. With PLT Scheme’s main dialect of the language sufficiently deviating from the standard, they renamed themselves to Racket.

And I think 99.999% of music played in clubs is boring because I’m not interested in the exploration of the emotional motifs that they do. Doesn’t mean that it’s not art, that they’re not doing any exploration, though, even though there’s large amounts of formulaic slop. It means that most DJs aren’t Boris Brejcha. And even with how good he is, due to setting, audience, he’s no French 79, Aphex Twin, you name it.

My definition accounts for all that nuance, any particular work can be various degrees of art and craft and the 100th bread that our baker bakes from their own artful recipe is no less of a piece of art than Andy Warhol’s 100th print of the same thing.

Technical aside all generative AI is denoising. At least all diffusion models, don’t really know the tech behind the rest.

Models made for generation will be able to denoise complete noise, reading things into it, but will also be able to only denoise a little bit. Models made for denoising might lack the capacity and training for a complete denoise to be faster, but ultimately it’s still the same technology.

Craft is about objective, not subjective, choice. Craft is saying “The wall of this mug needs to be thicker or I won’t have enough clay to trim the surface smooth”. Art is saying “I’d like to do some more experiments with copper inclusions, they tickle my aesthetic sense”. Sorry I watched a lot of Florian Gadsby lately.

The creation of a bread recipe often involves art, it is a conversation between your personal taste and the medium. Figuring out how to bake 100 of those a day in a reliable, reproducible manner, is craft. Different bakers land on different points on that spectrum. It’s no different with goon artists, but they probably all have created a recipe or two.

Do you think animals, apart from humans, can create art?

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s dolphin poetry. Most animals simply don’t seem to be able or interested, though, the development of art as a reflective practice (as in: the science of subjective choice) requires a lack of pre-programming, reliance on self-reprogramming, that’s mostly limited to humans as far as we’re aware.

Cats seem to like music in pretty much the same way as we like purring, as in: It resonates with them, but so far there’s no cat composers out there, reflecting the thrill and joy of the hunt in terms of music. I’d totally listen to that.

With all of what I said? Damn.